Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Stug III C/D

A little armoured fire support for the Heer!

I had for a moment thought I’d title this post “At Last Some Elves”… just to fake out those waiting for me to get back to HOTT. But lately I’ve been looking back through the blog to find pictures of games or minis I posted over the last couple years and it’s really darn hard to find stuff when you use misleading of vague post titles!

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

This is a Stug IIIC/D fromArmy Group North Miniatures. Nice Model. My only complaint would be that it would have been nice to have a little diagram to see where all the little bits and bobs were supposed to go.

The commander is not from AGNM (at least as far as I know!). I got it in a lot of assorted drivers and commanders. He was actuall a driver of some sort wih a sterring wheel in his hands. I carved his arms off and made new ones with green stuff…

While this will be fun to bust up some Barbarossa Bunkers on the Stalin Line, I think I’d like a Stug IIIG (or two!) if I were to pick up some more. Does anyone make one…!?

I was thinking I might lull the players in my east front campaign into a false sense of security this evening by telling them they’ve finally met up with some friendly forces on the Stalin line… give them a nice hard bunker to hold… then come and blast them with the Stug – new toys must always be tried out! We shall see…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Did I say something about Bobbies, Diggers or Elves…? Hmmmmm…. How about some more Canucks or Commandos…!?

8 comments:

It's a "Sturmgeschütz", technically speaking - A mobile armoured assault gun to provide direct fire support for the infantry. It was originally developed by the Artillery. The Panzer Corps wanted nothing to do with them - I think they were concerned that production of these would cut panzer production or worse put them out of business entirely.

(I've been reading the Osprey book on "Sturmartillerie and Panzerjäger" - so this is all new to me too!)

Aye. They were sort of an improvization, really. Usually they were constructed on captured or obsolete tracked vehicle chassis, and whatever gun was available was mounted on them. A great many captured Russian 76.2mm AT guns were mounted on such vehicles, but a StuG could have anything from a short 75mm howitzer to a long 88mm AT gun to a 150mm howitzer.

At first they were used as infantry support weapons but eventually they were pressed into the roles of ersatz tank and mobile antitank gun (these latter usually were designated PzJgr but the difference from a StuG was more doctrinal than mechanical, and many vehicles with the StuG designation did in fact use heavy antitank guns of some kind)

As the war went on, it came about that the Germans manufactured more StuGs than tanks, because, lacking a turret, they were less expensive to manufacture. And by the late war era, the Germans were manufacturing a dizzying variety of them, almost to the extent of each combination of gun and chassis frankenstein'd together being a one-off.

They were only fair in the infantry support role, but those with high-velocity guns excelled in the defensive panzerjaeger (antiarmor) role.

Love the Stug III -- it was always one of my favorites. When I was a kid I just thought it "looked cool" and I guess my affinity for it on that basis alone stuck with me into adulthood. Awesome job with the model!